Intel lifts curtain on Gulftown with six core, twelve thread grunt

The age of Gulftown raises its head today to instill fear into all that surrounds it. The first in this new series is the top dog Core i7-980X Extreme Edition clocked at 3.33GHz.

A 32nm manufacturing process is one significant highlight over previous LGA-1366 based Core i7 chips, but the biggest highlight is the fact that it comes with 6 cores packed inside, which together with Hyper Threading enables 12 threads to be used.

Another attractive feature is the price. Okay, so $1,000 isn't attractive to most people, but considering the four-core Core i7 975 Extreme launched at the same price, this hexa-core monster sure gives you a lot more bang for your buck.

With Intel today giving rights to reviewers worldwide to share test results of their samples, there's a stack of coverage now floating about on the web which you can get to via the below links. But before you do that, be sure to check out our full review here as well as a separate article from world reknowned extreme overclocker Dean 'Deanzo' Smith where he pushes his sample to the edge using LN2 cooling. The results are quite staggering.